


Ghost of Christmas Past

by Saraste



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Baking, Childhood Trauma, Christmas, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Kissing, M/M, SGA Secret Santa Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 18:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17085254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Rodney and John are baking gingerbread cookies with their daughter when Rodney's past comes back to haunt him, thankfully John is there to set things right again.





	Ghost of Christmas Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [librarychick_94](https://archiveofourown.org/users/librarychick_94/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, dear giftee! *hugs* 
> 
> I hope you like this little slice-of-life snippet with Rodney, John and their daughter Abby, whom I made up for this fic (she's named after Ada Lovelace, who was a Victorian computer visionary, and is sometimes dubbed the worlds first programmer. Her father was, incidentally, _that_ Lord Byron. Sadly none of that came up in the fic, but I just thought you'd like the tidbit.)
> 
> I had fun writing this and I hope you have fun reading it. :D

” _ Rodney, _ ” John whined in that special way of his, a smudge of flour on one cheek and some more in his hair, which he’d just pulled in response to Rodney’s words. “They don’t  _ need  _ to be perfect.”

Which was wrong, of course, because what did John know of striving and never being perfect? He’d been perfect for as long as Rodney had known him, or at least perfect to Rodney, in any case.

“Yes they do!” Rodney argued, gesticulating at the table and the baking implements strewn across it. “What’s the  _ point _ , otherwise?”

John had the audacity to smile that dazzling smile of his, the bastard, making Rodney’s heart jump even after all these years. “Well’, they’ll still taste the same, even if they are a bit wonky, or if the icing is not quite  state fair winner material. The taste is the point anyway, isn’t it?” John knew something was off, it was written all across his face, but in the present company he couldn’t be more blunt about it.

Rodney huffed, crossing his arms, echoes of the past standing right behind his shoulder, hands pushing his hands this way and that, making him strive for perfection that had never been achieved, not when it came to Christmas cookies. “Appearance is half the pleasure,” he heard himself repeating the words that  had been drilled into him all through his childhood. He could still  _ hear  _ her, even when he’d spent years of his life trying to stifle that voice.

At this point, Addy stepped in, as she always did. She was John’s daughter through and through, and it wasn’t just her messy dark hair and love of flying, but also the need to be the peacemaker. “Are you being silly again?”

Rodney turned to her, very serious, but suddenly realizing that she might think they were arguing, and that was something he had never wanted for her, he had wanted to give her better, the sort of good and loving family life Jeanie was giving Madison. “I am  _ not _ silly,” he declared, but not unkindly, because it was not her fault if his past ghosts were intent on trying and ruining Christmas now that his daughter was old enough to notice things being off and starting to think about  _ why  _ and come to the conclusion that her parents were a couple of good-for-nothings and hate them for the rest of her life, because she was smart, being their daughter. The sky wasn’t all she loved.

She cocked her head and stared at him from across the table, a smudge of flour on her cheek and a liberal dusting down her I LOVE MY DADDIES -rainbow apron she had picked out herself. “Yes, you are, daddy.”

And even while Rodney knew that he must look silly, his hair standing on end, brandishing a rolling pin in one hand and dressed in an ‘I  ❤️ CANADA’ -apron Jeannie had given him last Christmas, he still had to argue against it, even if in a mutter. “Am not.” He felt all of five years old doing so, like she was.

John looked between him and her and then proceeded to ruffle her hair while throwing Rodney a wry, insinuating smile when she couldn’t see. “Well, as long as you don’t burn them.”

“As if I’d burn them,” Rodney scoffed, instinctively crossing his arms across his chest and, from the suppressed laughter written all over John’s face, apparently looking ridiculous while doing so. That, of course, made him frown and John lost the battle, bending double with his loud guffaws. Addy started giggling too, even though it was probably more laughing along than laughing for the same reasons that John was.

Finally, John managed to rein in his hilarity and looked at Rodney with his eyes bright and face red, leaning onto the table for support.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Rodney said, resting rolling pin onto the table and considering if the gingerbread cookie dough had been on the table for too long, or if it might need refrigeration to reduce the stickiness. They’d just begun rolling their respective lumps into sheets to cut shapes from when Rodney had had his sudden blast from the past that had frozen his hand mid-roll and screeched his mind into a stop, and just because John had been  _ laughing  _ with Addy, having fun,  _ because baking wasn’t supposed to be fun. _

“All you were missing was a scarf wrapped over the curlers in your hair and you’d have been like an angry housewife from the fifties,” John said, clearly trying to get a rise out of him, to shift his mood, even if into irritation. 

“I am  _ not _ some housewife from the fifties, I’m a brilliant scientist!”

John was rounding the table now and Addy had begun to poke at her own lump of dough with her own child-sized rolling pin again. John had been helping her, but she was apparently deciding she could do it on her own. Now, John was coming for him, with that glint in his eyes and that swagger that meant business in his step. He came right up to Rodney and looked at him, smile still lingering on his lips and, as inevitable as anything, and he leaned in to grab at Rodney and kiss him long and deep, Rodney grabbing him back and closing his eyes, shutting out everything that wasn’t John.

“We’re baking, not kissing!” Addy informed them when it had gone on for quite a while, when John’s hand had migrated to squeeze at Rodney’s ass and his body was pressing him against the counter.

John’s eyes were fond when Rodney opened his eyes and their lips had parted. “I  _ know _ that you’re a brilliant scientist, Rodney, and no housewife. But I’ve seen you put together less than perfect life-saving solutions when our  _ lives _ depended on it. What’s with this perfection or nothing all of a sudden?”

And yes, Rodney had to give him that, of course John didn’t understand, the ghost of Rodney’s long-dead mother and her often crushing demands for perfection when it came to baking or cooking, which her life had centered around, had only surfaced now that Addy was older. Yet all he could say was, “Well… all that mattered, yes of course, but this is  _ important _ .”

John rolled his eyes. “And saving our lives wasn’t?”

Rodney couldn’t look at him, he should have gone to therapy over his childhood traumas, he knew, but they had never come back quite like this. “This is a different kind of important.” That was all he could say in front of Addy. He glanced across the table to see that she was currently nibbling at the raw dough, and an admonishment was already on his lips, nasty and vile, but he swallowed it back, because he was  _ never _ going to be that kind of parent.

John was holding him gently now, he knew what it had been like for Rodney growing up, they had discussed it before making the final decision to try and become parents, and seemed to finally realize the reasons behind Rodney’s sudden demand for perfection. “How so?” he asked softly.

“It’s Christmas,” Rodney said, sounding choked.

Rodney’s childhood Christmases had meant perfection in anything from baking and cooking to the Christmas tree with every bauble, light and garland arranged  _ just so _ , and endless rebukes and nastiness when everything Rodney had tried to do had not been perfect enough, and he had tried so hard, wanting to please, but even moreso, desperate not to hear it wasn’t any good. Their first Christmas as a family, with him and John and Addy had been the first time Rodney had ever gotten to decorate a Christmas tree without anyone at his shoulder instructing him and eventually pushing him aside with a wide-eyed Jeannie in tow, their mother telling them she’d do it herself, as they were obviously no good at making it  _ perfect _ , just the way she liked.

John caught his eye and hugged him. “It’ll be perfect enough for her later when she remembers us all being together and doing things our way with smiles on our faces, having fun.”

Rodney looked from him to Addy, his bright, perfect child, who was healthy and happy. She knew she was being loved and never flinched when either of them approached her, didn’t avert her eyes or cry because she didn’t think she was good enough, to whom Christmas and all other days were happiness to be explored, not days of dread, of fearing when the next nasty word might come, waiting for a slap that was always hovering just out of sight, waiting.

“You’re right, they don’t need to be perfect,” he admitted the truth he had known but forgotten as old memories had resurfaced when he’d least wanted them to. “They just need to be made.” He looked at his family, smiling. ‘It’s the taste that counts.”

  
  
  



End file.
